


Lucky Man

by miasnape



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Fluff and Angst, Infidelity, M/M, Original Character(s), Past Relationship(s), Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:38:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miasnape/pseuds/miasnape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Hodges has an odd reaction to the new DNA guy, and then the new DNA guy has an odd reaction to David. Everyone else manages to get involved too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Man

> _But how many corners do I have to turn?  
>  How many times do I have to learn  
>  All the love I have is in my mind?_
> 
> _But I'm a lucky man  
>  With fire in my hands_
> 
> _Gotta love that'll never die_
> 
> -'Lucky Man' by Richard Ashcroft

Nick Stokes ambled through the corridors of the Las Vegas Police Department crime lab, glancing vaguely through the glass windows to his left at the DNA lab before making a right into Trace.

"Hodges, my man, make my case for me. What do you have?"

David Hodges swivelled toward Nick on his desk chair and picked up a blue file. "Are you incapable of making your own case now? You're always leaning on me to get results and make you seem like the big shot you so want to be."

Nick grinned, snatching the file from the hand of David's outstretched arm. "Can I help it if my last few cases have all revolved around trace evidence?"

"Yes," David said bluntly. "Anyway, the chemical on the towel was trichloroethane."

Nick looked interested. "Really?"

David shook his head. "But not, as you seem to have expected, methyl chloroform - that's 1,1,1-trichloroethane. What's on your towel is 1,1,2-trichloroethane."

Nick moved over and leaned against the bench David sat at. "Okay, so what does that mean?"

David rolled his eyes. "And you call yourself a scientist?"

Nick laughed and David continued. "It has the same effects on the body as methyl chloroform - it can be used a central nervous system suppressant - but it's very rare to see it used for that purpose; it's usually only produced as an intermediate," David paused, and with a wry smirk clarified, "- that's an unstable temporary product that's used up later in the chemical reaction."

This time Nick rolled his eyes. "Uh-huh?"

"- in the production of 1,1-dichloroethane. Now, 1,1-dichloroethane is found in a lot of things, but most relevant to your case is the fact that it's the active fumigant in some insecticide sprays."

"The brother?" Nick asked.

David nodded. "Yes, the factory where your victim's brother works makes that particular type of spray. Now, unless it's stored well, this stuff isn't going to hang around, so I got them to send over a sample of the stuff made on the day of and day before your victim's death to do a comparison test. I'll get back to you when the results are in."

Nick stood and pointed at Hodges with the blue file. "You, my friend, are a genius."

David shrugged, and swivelled back to his microscope. "About time some one of you figured that out."

Nick glanced through the glass windows towards the DNA lab again. "We've got another new DNA tech starting today."

David snorted, bent over his microscope. "Any bets with Warrick on how long this one's going to last yet?"

Nick put an innocent expression on his face. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't," David said wryly, not looking up. "And I'm also sure that you need to win this one - you're almost 100 bucks down to Warrick."

"How do you labrats always know this stuff?" Nick asked.

"We're secretly trained as psychics, obviously. That or we've got glass walls and you're not as quiet or as subtle as you seem to think you are. And Archie's a gossip."

Nick kept his eyes on the new arrival across the corridor. "That damned Trekkie can't keep his mouth shut," he said, tone light and joking.

"No," David replied, sounding slightly preoccupied. "What's this one like?"

Nick squinted a little, trying to catch details. "Male. Late thirties. Sandy hair, slightly taller than Greg, smaller than Warrick, and too normal looking. Won't last more'n a couple of weeks," he said, sounding confident in his diagnosis of the situation.

David finally looked up and around, trying to see what Nick was seeing.

"Don't you have anywhere else you can scope out the new recruits? You know, somewhere not in my way and..." David trailed off slowly and stood up. His chair moved backwards slightly and then rolled slowly to a stop by the mass spectrometer.

Nick turned around to see what had stopped David and his eyebrows furrowed as he saw the tech standing, staring into the DNA lab, arms dangling loosely by his sides.

"What's up? Do you know this guy?" he asked.

David stared without saying anything for a few more seconds, then shook his head slightly and started moving jerkily towards the doorway.

"Um, I'm- I've. I'll be in the locker room."

David turned right as he left the room and quickly paced away in the direction of the lab's locker room.

~*~

Nick approached the DNA lab slowly, scrutinising the new tech. He had basically summed the guy's appearance up when he'd been describing him to Hodges - tall, sandy, curly hair, the good-looking side of normal, and dressed in tan colour trousers and a black turtleneck sweater under his white lab coat.

Warrick and Greg were standing chatting to him by the workstation in the middle of the room, and they all seemed quite casual and comfortable when he walked in.

"Hey, Warrick, Greggo." Nick nodded to each as he spoke.

Warrick clapped a hand on Nick's left shoulder. "Hey, Nick. This is Jake, the new guy."

"Hey," Jake said, smiling in a friendly way.

Nick nodded briefly. "Hi," he looked around at Warrick. "'Rick, can I talk to you a second?"

The two moved to the doorway of the lab.

"What's up, man?" Warrick asked in a hushed voice.

"I don't know, but the new guy? Hodges took one look at him and left his lab in a big hurry - never seen anything like it with him," Nick explained in a low tone.

"Excuse me?" The new tech approached them with a puzzled look. "I'm sorry, but did you just say Hodges?"

Nick and Warrick looked at each other. "How did you hear us all the way over here?" Warrick asked.

"I have really good hearing," Jake explained, running a hand through his hair. "But you said Hodges? David Hodges?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Yes."

Jake took a step backward. "He's the Trace tech here?"

Greg walked forward until he came level with Jake. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

Nick shrugged. "I don't know. Is there?"

Jake stuck his hands in the pockets of his starched coat. "I knew he came here a few years ago, but I didn't know he'd stayed. I thought." He stopped talking and looked up at three inquisitive faces.

"We were colleagues in LA," he said. "He's here right now?"

Nick looked at him and then sighed. "He's in the locker room. If you find it yourself..."

"He might not kill you for letting me know?" Jake finished, shaking his head. He said a vague, "Thanks," to Nick, glancing around in several directions before picking one and walking off, leaving three puzzled looking CSIs in his wake.

~*~

Jake Graham walked down an unfamiliar corridor, peeking through rooms to try and catch a glimpse of the locker room he'd been shown earlier that evening. He looked directly down the corridor and laughed once, quietly and without much humour. He'd been walking directly towards it without realising.

He walked slowly up to the door and peered around. There was a figure at the top of the second row on the left, sitting on the bench. Jake walked closer and took a deep breath.

"David?" he asked, his voice sounding hesitant.

David jerked around, then stood up, staring at Jake. "What are you doing here?" he asked, making it sound like a cold accusation.

Jake froze. "I didn't... know you still worked here," he said.

David crossed his arms over his chest. "I do, obviously. And now so do you."

Jake sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets. "I don't-- What do you want me to say?"

David, arms still crossed, looked Jake up and down, then flicked his eyes towards the front of the room. Sara was standing at the end of the row of lockers, watching with curiosity. David looked back at Jake. "Nothing. I have work to do."

He started to walk away, towards Sara and the door, when Jake caught his sleeve. "Dee..."

David glared at him.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Jake asked.

David shrugged his arm out of Jake's loose grip and began to walk away again. "Yes," he said, baldly and without looking back. He glared once at Sara before pushing past her and leaving.

Jake sat down heavily on the bench beside him and put his head in his hands. "Great," he muttered.

Sara looked at him for a few seconds, then left.

~*~

Catherine walked into the break room to find a discussion in full throttle. Nick was standing by the open refrigerator tossing a can of soft drink to Warrick, who was sitting at the table with Sara. A bag of take-out sandwiches sat ripped open in the midst of them, with napkins and paper plates strewn about carelessly.

"I'm telling you," Sara was saying, "there's definitely something strange going on with the two of them, but what it is...?" she shrugged.

"Talking about a case?" Catherine asked, sliding into a chair beside Warrick and picking up a plate and half a sandwich.

"Soda?" Nick asked, and then threw her a can when she nodded. "No, my current case is pretty much solved if Hodge's trace goes the way we think it will."

"And speaking of Hodges," Warrick said, "that's what we were talking about."

Sara nodded, swallowing. "He and the new trace tech seem to have some kind of history."

"Good or bad," asked Catherine, opening out a napkin.

"Bad," Nick and Warrick said in unison.

"I'm not so sure," Sara said. Everyone looked at her.

"Jake called Hodges 'Dee'. I'm saying, there's something strange between them, but I don't think it's cut and dried good or bad."

Catherine coughed as some soda went down the wrong way. "Someone called Hodges 'Dee'? Our Hodges? And survived?"

Sara gestured towards Catherine. "See?" she mumbled through a mouthful of egg salad on rye.

"Hmm." Catherine hummed, thinking. She looked at Warrick. "You know, if he hadn't asked us for advice about that woman he's interested in, I'd be tempted to think maybe, you know..."

Nick looked up sharply. "He asked you two about her too?"

Catherine and Warrick both nodded. Sara waved her hand about a bit. "He asked me too," she said.

"Anyone get a name or anything?" Warrick asked. Everyone looked blank.

Catherine raised an eyebrow. "You know, you ask one or two people, maybe three, it's normal enough - just getting a second opinion. But four?"

Nick spotted Greg walking past and called out to him. "Yo, Sanders! Come in here a second."

Greg span around on his heel, turning full circle in the middle of the hall until he faced them. "What?"

"Has Hodges ever asked you for advice about this woman he's interested in?" Nick asked.

Greg grinned, then walked into the break room. Turning a chair around, he sat down. "This is about the new guy, isn't it? I'm shrewd, I catch the undercurrents."

Sara laughed. "Well, has he?"

Greg nodded. "Of course he has. He's asked everyone - he's probably even asked Grissom. At first I thought he was just really interested in this mystery woman, but when everyone seemed to have been asked I started to figure maybe he was trying some propaganda."

"You think he's trying to smoke-screen something?" Catherine asked.

Greg nodded and stood up again. "And now I'm thinking it's something to do with this Jake guy."

He started walking out when Nick called out to him again. "Where're you off to?"

Greg smirked, eyebrows dancing. "To talk to Jake, where else?"

Sara smiled. "What, without another pirouette?"

Greg did jazz hands at her, and then skipped off in the direction of his old lab.

"You know, he still has far too much energy," Nick commented, before turning his attention back to his meal.

~*~

Jake stood in the middle of his new lab and waited for the printer to spit out the results he had been working on. Someone coughed behind him, and he looked around to see Greg Sanders, the guy who had been showing him around earlier.

"Greg, hi. Your DNA results won't be ready for another half hour or so," Jake said, lifting the results page from the printer. "Sorry," he added.

Greg shrugged, walking in and leaning against the bench. "Hey, I worked in here - I know how it is. So you used to work with Hodges?"

The still-warm piece of paper fluttered to the floor, and Jake bent to pick it up, cheeks reddening. "David? In LA," he confirmed, not looking at Greg. By the time he stood again, the redness had drained from his face.

"Was he as hard to work with there as he is here?" Greg asked, "or do you have any tips for handling him?"

Jake examined his printout. "No, he's pretty much always been that way - you know, kind of a touchy, arrogant perfectionist."

Greg smiled. "Sounds like Hodges."

"Just, you know, give him proper respect and he's not too harsh, I think," Jake said, slipping the results into a red file then turning to set it into the tray at the edge of the bench.

"Yeah, well he's calmed down a lot since he first transferred, I suppose," Greg said casually, fingering the test tubes stacked neatly upside-down in their rack.

Jake glanced quickly at Greg before reaching over to pick up a swab in its evidence collection bag. "Was- was he-When he transferred, he was-?"

"Pretty much a bit of an asshole," Greg said with a nod, "I mean he still can be, but he seems much more at ease now. You know, more relaxed. He actually talks to us; laughs every so often."

"Really?" Jake asked, tone easy and casual.

Greg leaned in slightly closer. "I used to think something crappy had happened to him before he came here."

Jake jerked a little, almost unnoticeably, before uncapping the swab.

Greg laughed and moved back. "Now I know he's just that kind of guy. You get used to it, I suppose."

"Greg, shouldn't you be doing something useful?"

Jake looked around and saw the guy who had taken a bag of his blood this evening, apparently for 'so many reasons', and felt a slight twinge in his left arm where he now wore a fetching blue band-aid under the long sleeves of his black sweater.

"I'm on a break, Griss," Greg told the older man.

"We have a whole room designated for that," Grissom said, "you don't have stand about annoying... is it Jack?"

"Jake," he corrected quickly with a nod.

"Annoying Jake on his first day," Grissom continued.

"It's fine, he was just chatting. I have your results, sir," Jake said, lifting the uppermost red file from the tray and handing it to Grissom.

"Thank you," Grissom said, flipping the file open.

Jake looked through the glass walls at David, then at Greg, then back to Grissom. He recapped the swab. "I was wondering, sir," he started.

"Grissom is fine," Grissom interrupted, eyes still scanning his results.

"Well, I was wondering if I could have a quick word with you in private," Jake continued.

Grissom closed the file and looked at him, then Greg.

Greg put his hands in the air and walked backwards towards the door. "I'm going, I'm going. I can take a hint. I think Jacqui could use some annoying."

When Greg was gone, Grissom looked back at Jake. "Is there a problem?"

~*~

Jacqui looked up to see Greg hovering at her doorway. "What now?" she asked, "I've given you all your results."

Greg wandered in. "Have you talked to the new guy yet?" he asked.

"For a few minutes. Seems nice enough," Jacqui said.

"Seen Hodges at all today?" Greg wondered, walking over to poke at Jacqui's computer monitor buttons. She smacked his hand away.

"Get off. And yes - he's in a pissy mood." She looked up, suddenly interested. "Is it something to do with the new guy?"

Greg put his hands to his chest and fluttered his eyelids. "Do I look like the office gossip?" he asked.

She just kept staring at him.

"Fine," he said, crossing his arms, "but I'm starting to think you only love me for my information."

"Poor baby," Jacqui said, smiling and tucking some hair behind her ear. "What's up with the new guy?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Greg said.

"We?" Jacqui asked.

"Everyone's interested; such is the weirdness of the way they react to each other."

Jacqui nodded. "And you think this fits in with your Propaganda Theory?"

"You are so wise," Greg told her, pretending to swoon. "They used to work together in LA, and something is definitely up with them."

"So, what's he saying to Grissom?" Jacqui asked, nodded toward the DNA lab.

Greg turned and they both watched as Jake talked, gesturing with his hands.

"That I do not know, sadly," Greg said.

Through the glass walls, Grissom nodded at whatever Jake was saying, then they both glanced over into David's lab.

~*~

"You're saying that something happened in LA that might make your working relationship here strained," Grissom summarised, looking back to Jake from David, who was sorting through stomach contents in his lab.

"Yes," Jake said, then sighed. "This is confidential?" he asked.

Grissom nodded. "Of course."

Jake looked down at the floor for a few seconds, and then back up at Grissom. "We were... involved," Jake said simply, "and it ended badly."

Grissom stared at him, eyes slightly wider than they had been a few seconds ago. "Do you think any problems caused by this will be more than temporary?"

Jake's gaze flickered over to Trace again. "I hope not. Certainly nothing that would compromise the integrity of the lab," he promised.

"Then," Grissom said, "what has or will happen between the two of you is none of this lab's business in my opinion."

Jake let out a deep breath. "Thank you, Grissom."

Grissom flicked his red file open again. "There are seven alleles in common?" he asked.

"Brother or sister," Jake confirmed with a nod.

"My suspect has some explaining to do," Grissom told Jake with a frown. "Thank you," he said, then gravitated out towards his office.

Jake looked at David for a long moment, then went back to the swab. "Some explaining to do," he said in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. "You're not kidding."

~*~

David was sticking a label on a glass specimen container when Catherine came in.

"You got my guy's stomach contents sorted?" she asked.

David glanced up at her, "Just about, and can I say how grateful I am that this guy hasn't eaten any hotdogs in the recent past?"

Catherine laughed. "But the clothes peg was such an attractive look. So, what has he eaten?" she asked, looking at the specimen containers. She did a double take at one label. "You keep one labelled 'weird' all the time?"

David looked at her. "In this job?"

Catherine shook her head slightly. "So what is this weird thing?"

A piece of aged-looking paper wadded into a large ball sat in a small puddle of cloudy liquid. "Let's find out," David said, and put a new pair of gloves on.

Easing the paper open, he revealed a faded, annotated picture. A small, golden key fell out from the middle into the container.

"Is that a key and a-?"

"Looks like a treasure map to me," David agreed. "X marks the spot and everything. Was your victim a pirate?" he asked with a hint of a smile.

"Okay, fine," Catherine said, throwing her hands in the air in defeat, "this is a weird thing to find in someone's stomach. This is a weird job. Can you send this up to Ronnie in QD and try to find out what kind of things this," she poked at the key with her pen, "might open?"

David smiled. "Aye, aye, captain."

Catherine turned away, then back almost as quickly. "You know you're the subject of today's rumour mill?" she asked.

David looked at her, unsurprised. "I had some idea."

"And you know we've seen through your attempt to convince us you were after some mystery woman." she stated bluntly.

David, putting the map into a bag for transfer, shrugged. "It took you all longer than I thought it would."

Catherine smiled one last time before leaving. "I'll take that as a compliment."

David sealed the bag and initialled it. "I wouldn't," he muttered, and set about examining the other containers.

~*~

There were only about 10 minutes of the night shift left when Jake finished up with all of his evidence and the backlog from day shift. He looked over to Trace. David was drying off his equipment by his sink. Taking a deep breath, Jake headed over to him.

David looked up when he came in the door. "Yes?"

Jake ran his hand through his hair. "We need to talk, Dee. We won't be able to work together if we don't talk about what happened."

David slammed the metal tripod he was holding down on the counter. "What is there to talk about?" he asked in a loud hiss. "We had a relationship, it started going downhill, you slept with someone else and I left."

Jake closed his eyes and swallowed. "It's not that simple. You know that - it's never been that simple for us."

David crossed his arms. "It seemed that simple at the time." He looked up and saw Jacqui and Archie staring in at them from the A/V lab with some concern. He sighed. "This isn't the time or the place for this."

Jake walked towards him. "When will it be? Name it, and I'll be there, but you can't run away from this again."

David put up a hand in warning. "Don't," he said, voice angry.

"Don't what?" Jake snapped. "Don't tell you the truth? You ran away, David. You left in the middle of the day, and I had to find out from our boss where you had gone!"

David's jaw tightened. "You're angry at me? Three years later you still can't accept that you were in the wrong?"

Jake sighed and looked at the ceiling for a second, trying to keep his emotions in check. "I didn't want another fight, Dee. I just, I wanted to talk to you - to try to explain what- why I did what I did."

David turned his back on Jake and started putting his equipment away. "I think you made yourself extremely clear three years ago, Jake: I was cold and distant and you thought there was barely a relationship to wreck, so why bother to pretend anymore."

Jake stalked over to David and turned him around with a hand on his right bicep. "You still don't get it, do you?" he asked urgently. "I was in love with you, and I got scared. You never ever said anything to me about how you felt, and I didn't know..."

David turned towards him, but didn't shake the hand off his arm. "Didn't know what?" he asked. "Didn't know if I was worth it?"

"I didn't know if you thought I was worth it," Jake said quietly. His hand ran down David's arm before he let go and moved back a step. "The way you treated me in front of the people we worked with, that was when you were cold and distant. And it was so different from the person I fell in love with that it scared me."

"And you thought the way to fix that was to sleep with the guy from Ballistics? Did it make things better for you?" David spat.

"Dee, it- even when it was happening it was ripping my heart out, and I don't know why..." Eyes glittering, Jake retreated a few more steps. David stalked over to his workbench and started shuffling paper around.

"You were so cruel to me at work," Jake explained, voice soft, "and I needed confirmation that you weren't ashamed of our relationship; that that wasn't why you froze me out at work. And it just... I was confused, and he made it obvious, right there in the lab in front of people that he was interested and I just made a bad decision."

David tensed up. "This still isn't the place for this," he said, voice trembling.

Jake walked to counter across from David. "Dee--"

"It's not the time and it's not the place!" David shouted, loud enough that all the staff in the surrounding rooms glanced up. Jake's eyes widened. "Three years ago, Jake! That was the time. Why are you-?" David bit his last words off, then started again in a much quieter voice, his eyes shining and his expression haggard. "Why are you suddenly back and doing this to me now, Jake? It's too late."

He set the paperwork down in his out tray and looked Jake in the eyes. "It's too late, Jake, and it still hurts too much. I need to... I need to go home."

And with the eyes of the rest of the lab on him, David walked away from his lab and left Jake standing there, dazed.

~*~

Greg wandered over to Jacqui and Archie, and then noticed Nick walking over behind him.

"Did you hear them?" Greg asked, his voice tinged with disbelief.

"Not much of it," Nick said. "Just the bit Hodges yelled."

Jacqui and Archie both looked shaken. "Greg, you should have seen his face," Jacqui said, voice quiet with emotion, "he was so... hurt."

"Which one?" Nick asked, glancing over as Jake slowly made his way toward the locker room.

"David," she said, and looked at Archie. "Whatever happened with them before, it really affected him, and he just... he looked so sad."

Archie put a comforting hand on Jacqui's shoulder, but nodded in agreement. "I've never seen him like that before. I've seen him angry and I've seen him confused and I've seen him upset, but that much all at once?"

Nick sighed. "This isn't good, is it?"

"Should one of us go after him?" Greg asked, "Or would that just make things worse?"

"I suggest everyone gives them both space and stops talking about them," Grissom said, walking past them without stopping to hear anything anyone else said.

Greg looked at his boss's retreating back and then to his friends. "You know, I think Jake told Grissom what happened with them," he said. "Maybe we should take his advice."

They all nodded in agreement.

"Yes," Jacqui said in voice that brokered no argument, "we'll leave them alone and they'll come in one day soon and it'll be fixed."

"Plus," Archie noted, "it means none of us have to risk getting decapitated by David."

~*~

Grissom walked into the locker room and came to a halt a few feet away from Jake. Jake looked up. "I wouldn't have thought you'd need a locker, what with having an office of your own," he said.

"I don't," Grissom said.

"I'm sorry about that scene," Jake said, carefully folding his lab coat.

"Good. Do you know where he lives?" Grissom asked.

Jake turned his head sharply. "Excuse me?"

"I'm sure Judy on reception can give you his address. You should finish your discussion, either way." Grissom left without another word.

Jake shook his head. "That man is very strange," he said to himself.

"But most of the time he's right," said a female voice behind him. Jake turned to see Sara behind him.

"Between the glass walls and the staff appearing from nowhere it's hard to see how anyone can keep secrets around here," Jake said dryly.

"He's right, you know - you need to have it out properly." She smiled. "Somewhere with real brick walls and a lock on the door, maybe."

Jake smiled back.

"You don't want to cross the line into it becoming a problem everyone knows the details of," she said with a quiet authority. "And just think about it," she said, grabbing her jacket from her locker and putting it on, "if he's still this upset about whatever happened with you two, then he's still emotionally invested in the problem. And that means that it is still the time."

Jake nodded slowly. "Thanks. Sorry for all the drama on my very first day," he said.

Sara shrugged. "Hey, just think of it as your initiation. Welcome to Las Vegas."

She picked up her kit and walked away.

~*~

Jake drove up an unfamiliar street and checked the house number on the slip of paper that Judy the receptionist had given him. He rolled to a stop outside the right house, paused for a moment, and then parked his car up behind David's dusty Ford Explorer in the driveway.

Getting out of the car, Jake squinted in the bright morning sunlight. A few houses down a businessman in a dark suit carried a travel cup of coffee, a folded newspaper and a briefcase out to his silver Mercedes-Benz. Somewhere on the street a baby was crying.

Walking up the path to the door and pushing the doorbell, Jake felt a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. He pushed his sweater sleeves up to his elbows and waited.

After a few more seconds David answered the door. They both stared at each other. Jake felt tears coming to his eyes as he stood there, and David's face softened. "Come inside," David said.

Jake tried to smile, but his emotions got the better of him and a tear fell down his cheek.

"Hey," David said in a soft voice, and reached out - seemingly automatically - to wipe it away. He wrapped his arms around Jake and Jake reciprocated, gripping David's shoulders tightly and putting his face into the crook of David's neck.

David felt Jake sob once against his chest. "I'm so sorry, Dee. I am. I'm just so sorry."

David closed his eyes and carded his fingers through the curls at the base of Jake's neck, breathing in his scent.

They stood in their tight hold for several minutes before David spoke again. "Come inside. Please."

Jake took a shaky breath and moved back just a bit, just enough to look at David's face. "Thank you."

~*~

Jake sat holding a glass of ice water on one of David's breakfast bar stools. David sat on another across from him clutching a cup of coffee.

"I never even knew that you loved me until you left," Jake was saying. David closed his eyes momentarily.

"When I realised that I had done something so bad that you ran away... I mean, you're the bravest person I know," he continued, reaching over to put his hand on top of David's. "And then you were gone, and I found out where you were and I got the number of the lab, and I swear I must have keyed it in about a hundred times that first week, but I never hit the call button, because... I don't know why I never did."

David sighed. "Because I hurt you too," he said. "I love you, but I never told you that - never really told you anything. I never even told you why I acted that way to you at work."

He took his coffee-warmed hands and wrapped them around Jake's ice-cold hands.

"Before I moved to LA I was in New York, and there were these guys - friends of mine - who came out to the rest of the lab and the part of the force we worked with." David sounded resigned. "Two weeks later one of them was in hospital, beaten nearly to death. They found him in the precinct parking lot. He couldn't ever remember who it was who did it to him, but he remembered that every time they hit him or kicked him they called him a fag."

Jake rubbed one of his hands up and down David's forearm. "You can't have thought the same thing would've happened with us in LA?"

"Why not?" David asked simply, gesturing with his hands. "It's not like I was close with any of them - most of them already hated me - and you said yourself back then that you never really felt you fit in there."

"I wish you'd told me back then," Jake said, slight anger tinting his tone.

"And I wish you hadn't thought sleeping with another man would work better than asking me to talk to you more," David said bluntly.

Jake laughed humourlessly. "We're both idiots, aren't we?"

David snorted. "That wasn't ever in doubt."

"And we still have a lot to work through," Jake said, sadness evident in his expression.

"But you think we can work through it?" David asked.

Jake nodded decisively. "Yes, I do."

David set his coffee down, stood up and walked around the table. Jake stood up too and they wrapped their arms around each other again.

"What about you," Jake asked.

David looked at him. "I do too," he said, and then caught Jake in a searing, tender kiss. When they broke away David rested his forehead against Jake's. "It's not too late. I'm sorry I said it was," he told Jake.

"No one believed you anyway," Jake informed him. "You know, you've got some good friends in that place."

"I do?" David asked, sounding surprised.

Jake laughed quietly. "You do," he confirmed, and then pulled David in for another long kiss.

"I guess I'm just lucky, then."

THE END


End file.
